经济学人双语阅读4

经济学人双语阅读4
经济学人双语阅读4

经济学人杂志双语阅读:Dismal science沉闷的科学

Paul Krugman's London lectures

保罗克鲁格曼伦敦演讲

Dismal science

沉闷的科学(注1)

Jun 11th 2009

From The Economist print edition

The Nobel laureate speaks on the crisis in the economy and in economics

诺贝尔奖得主就经济危机和经济学问题发表演讲

THE London School of Economics was once so popular among young American scholars that British students used to joke that LSE stood for “Let's See Europe”. A distinguished sightseer, Paul Krugman, returned to the LSE on June 8th to give the annual Lionel Robbins memorial lectures. Mr Krugman, who gave the Robbins lectures 21 years ago, tried to answer two big questions in the course of his three talks. Why did economists not foresee calamity? And how will the world economy climb out of recession?

伦敦经济学院曾经在美国青年学者中是如此的受欢迎,以至于英国学生曾笑称其为欧洲的象征。六月八日,令人尊敬的客人-保罗克鲁格曼先生,回到伦敦经济学院为一年一度的莱昂内尔罗宾斯纪念典礼做演将。克鲁格曼先生曾在二十一年前的罗宾斯纪念典礼上发表过演说,在当时的三场演讲中,他试图解说两大问题,即“为什么经济学家不对灾难进行预测?”和“世界经济如何走出衰退?”

The immediate cause of the crisis, “the mother of all global housing bubbles”, wa s spotted by many economists. That house prices had risen too far was obvious, even if policymakers had seemed less sure. The surprise was that the bursting of the bubble would be so damaging. “I had no idea it would end so badly,” said Mr Krugman.

许多经济学家认为,引发危机的的直接原因是“全球房地产泡沫之母”。很明显,住房价格已经涨得太高了,虽然决策者们对此看上去并不是很肯定。令人吃惊的是泡沫的破灭竟然会具有如此破坏性。“我不曾想到它会产生如此糟糕的结果,”克鲁格曼先生说。

One big blind spot was the financial system. The mistake was to think “a bank had to look like something Jimmy Stewart could run”, with rows of tel lers taking deposits in a marble-fronted building. In fact a bank is anything that uses short-term borrowing to finance long-term assets that are hard to sell at a push. The shadow banking system was as important to the economy as the ordinary kind, but was far more vulnerable. Its collapse was the modern re-run of the bank failures of the 1930 s, said Mr Krugman.

金融系统是一个大盲点。人们所犯的错误是认为“银行看上去就像是吉米·史都华(注2)能够掌控一样”,出纳员在大理石建筑中排队领取保证金。(注3)而事实上银行是任何通过短期借款来进行长期融资的机构,很难一下子卖出所

有金融品。影子银行体系对于经济来说与普通商业银行体系同样重要,但却脆弱的多。这一体系的崩溃其实是上世纪三十年代中的银行倒闭在现代的重演罢了,克鲁格曼先生说。

The excess borrowing that did for shadow banks threatens consumers, too. They are scrambling to save more as house prices plunge. Their mortgage debts loom larger

because of vanishing inflation. This urge to shore up wealth is self-defeating in aggregate, as it curbs spending and incomes. It also renders conventional monetary policy impotent, as the interest rate that prevents too much saving is below zero.

影子银行(注4)过度借款也造成了消费恐慌。由于房价的暴跌,消费者们争着将更多的钱放进银行。通货膨胀的消失使他们的抵押债务所面临的形势变得相当严峻。这种强烈的财富保值意识宏观加总后反而弄巧成拙,因为这抑制了支出和收入。它也使得传统的货币政策变得无能为力,因为为了阻止过多的储蓄,利率已经为负了。

That creates a role for fiscal policy. If zero interest rates cannot get consumers to spend, then governments must spend instead. That remedy comes from economics so the discipline is not without merit. The trouble is, “the analysis we're using is decades old”. It dates back to Keynes, one of the few economists whose reputation has been burnished by the crisis. (Another is Hyman Minsky, whose main insight was that stability leads to too much debt, and then to collapse.) Most work in macroeconomics in the past 30 years has been useless at best and harmful at worst, said Mr Krugman. 这创造了一个财政政策的新作用。如果零利率不能刺激消费,那么政府就必须代为支出。这个补救措施源自经济学研究,因此不是毫无价值的。但问题是“我们所使用的这种经济学分析已经有几十年的历史了”。这可以追溯到凯恩斯,他是为数不多的因危机而成名的经济学家中的一位。(另一位是海曼明斯基,他的主要观点是稳定导致过多债务从而引发崩溃。)宏观经济学在近30年中的多数研究说得好听点是毫无用处的,说的难听点甚至是有害的,克鲁格曼先生如是说。As for the economy, the road back to health will be long and painful. The big lesson from past bubbles is that recovery is export-led, which is not helpful “unless we can find another planet to export to”. Otherwise, recovery will have to wait for savings to be rebuilt, and that will not happen quickly. Higher inflation than before the crisis might help, he said.

至于经济,恢复健康的道路将是漫长而又痛苦的。从过去的泡沫危机中得到的启示是由出口带动经济复苏是无益的,“除非我们能找到另一个星球并对其进行出口”。否则,想要经济复苏就不得不等待储蓄的重建,而那不是短时间内能够完成的。比危机发生前更高的通胀也许有帮助,他说。

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注释:

1.经济学常常被称为“沉闷的科学”,因为经济学家经常带来坏消息。经济学不那么讨人喜欢,认真的经济学家常常带来泼冷水似的意见。他们会指出一个表面上看来很吸引人的项目,很可能结局并不那么美妙。

2.吉米·史都华:即詹姆斯·史都华(James Stewart),好莱坞影星,主演过《费城故事》、《后窗》、《迷魂记》、《桃色血案》等名片。

3.关于这句话,我网上查了很多资料,克鲁格曼所指的应该是史都华所演的《风云人物》中的场景,这部片子我现在在下,看过之后应该就可以理解了。

4.所谓影子银行系统,就是一群非银行机构,但是它们又确实在发挥着一整套银行的功能。比如它们将房地产贷款加工成有价证券,交易到资本市场,房地产业传统上由银行系统承担的融资功能逐渐被投资所替代,属于银行的证券化活动。

经济学人科技类文章中英双语

The Brain Activity Map 绘制大脑活动地图 Hard cell 棘手的细胞 An ambitious project to map the brain is in the works. Possibly too ambitious 一个绘制大脑活动地图的宏伟计划正在准备当中,或许有些太宏伟了 NEWS of what protagonists hope will be America’s next big science project continues to dribble out. 有关其发起人心中下一个科学大工程的新闻报道层出不穷。 A leak to the New York Times, published on February 17th, let the cat out of the bag, with a report that Barack Obama’s administration is thinking of sponsoring what will be known as the Brain Activity Map. 2月17日,《纽约时报》刊登的一位线人报告终于泄露了秘密,报告称奥巴马政府正在考虑赞助将被称为“大脑活动地图”的计划。 And on March 7th several of those protagonists published a manifesto for the project in Science. 3月7日,部分发起人在《科学》杂志上发表声明证实了这一计划。 The purpose of BAM is to change the scale at which the brain is understood. “大脑活动地图”计划的目标是改变人们在认知大脑时采用的度量方法。 At the moment, neuroscience operates at two disconnected levels. 眼下,神经学的研究处在两个断开的层次。 The higher one, where the dimensions of features are measured in centimetres, has many techniques at its disposal, notably functional magnetic-res onance imaging, which measures changes in tissues’ fuel consumption. 在相对宏观的层次当中各个特征的规模用厘米来衡量,有很多技术可以使用,尤其是用来测量组织中能量消耗变动情况的核磁共振成像技术。 This lets researchers see which bits of the brain are active in particular tasks—as long as those tasks can be performed by a person lying down inside a scanner. 该技术可使研究人员找出在完成具体的任务时,大脑的哪些部分处于活跃状态。At the other end of the scale, where features are measured in microns, lots of research has been done on how individual nerve cells work, how messages are sent from one to another, and how the connections between cells strengthen and weaken as memories are formed. 而另一个度量的层次则要求用微米来测量各种特征,这一层次的研究很多都是关于单个神经细胞是如何工作的、信息在神经细胞之间是如何传递的以及当产生记忆的时候神经细胞之间的联系是如何得到加强和减弱的。 Between these two, though, all is darkness. 然而,位于这两个层次之间的研究还处于一片漆黑当中。 It is like trying to navigate America with an atlas that shows the states, the big cities and the main highways, and has a few street maps of local neighbourhoods, but displays nothing in between.

13英语阅读-经济学人《Economics》双语版-Go forth and multiply

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经济学人中英对照Brave new words

Central banks 各国央行 Brave new words 大胆新言论 Rich-world central banks explore more doveish strategies 发达国家央行探索更加温和的政策 FOR four years rich-world central banks have done their best to rejuvenate economies with conventional and unconventional monetary policy. Now, with short-term interest rates still stuck near zero and their balance-sheets stuffed with government bonds, the central banks of America, Britain and Japan are experimenting with a shift in approach: coupling monetary action with commitments designed to alter the public’s expectati ons of interest rates, inflation and the economy. The sense of change is reinforced by the prospect of new leaders at the Japanese and British central banks, and the increasing prominence of several doves at America’s. 4年来,发达国家央行为经济复苏想尽了一切办法,常规和非常规货币政策你方唱罢我登场。时至今日,短期利率依然近乎于零,资产负债表上依然满是政府债券。美国、英国和日本央行正在尝试改变路线:为了改变公众对于利率、通胀和经济前景的预期,他们做出一系列承诺,并将货币政策与承诺相结合。日本和英国央行新领导人即将走马上任,加上美国几位鸽派人物的声音日益突出,使改变即将到来的感觉愈发强烈。 A more doveish stance would entail tolerating higher inflation, at least temporarily, in pursuit of higher output: a significant shift given the primacy central banks have long given to low inflation. Bond investors have begun to price in higher inflation (see chart). But just how far each central bank is prepared to go is still uncertain. 为了提高产值,更加温和的政策意味着必须要容忍更高水平的通胀,至少短期内会是如此:央行长期以来将低通胀率视为第一要务的政策即将迎来重大改变。一些大胆的投资人已经开始以更高的通胀率定价(见图)。但是各国央行的新政力度到底有多大尚不得而知。 In Japan, Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, has used the term “regime change” to describe the Bank of Japan’s (BoJ’s) agreement to raise its inflation targe t to 2% from 1%, and pursue it with unlimited asset purchases. There are expectations for even more forceful action once Masaaki Shirakawa, the current governor, and his two deputies depart on March 19th. Under Mr Shirakawa the BoJ bought lots more assets, but critics said he undercut the positive impact by repeatedly saying they were not enough to end deflation and by restricting the maturity of bonds the bank bought. 日本首相安倍晋三曾以“制度改革”一词来形容日本央行的政策变化。日本央行同意将通胀目标从1%提高到2%,并表示为了实现这一目标资产收购将不设上限。有人预期现任行长白川方明和两位副行长3月19日离任之后,会有力度更大的政策出台。白川在任期间日本央行购入了大量资产,但是有人批评到,由于白川经常强调购入的资产数量仍不足以结束通货紧缩,而且对买入债券的期限种类

经济学人

China in Laos Busted flush How a Sino-Lao special economic zone hit the skids May 26th 2011 | BOTEN, LAOS | from the print edition ?Tweet ? Soon all this will be jungle again AT HOME and abroad, China is a byword for fast-track development, where yesterday’s paddy field is tomorrow’s factory, highway or hotel. Less noticed is that such development can just as quickly go into reverse. Golden City, in Boten, just over the border from China in tiny Laos, is a case in point. When a Hong Kong-registered company signed a 30-year, renewable lease with the Lao government in 2003 to set up a 1,640-hectare special economic zone built with mainland money and expertise, Golden City was touted as a

经济学人双语阅读 1教学文案

经济学人双语阅读1

经济学人杂志双语阅读 Consumer spending in Asia:Shopaholics wanted Consumer spending in Asia亚洲消费状况 Shopaholics wanted 购物狂时代该来了? Jun 25th 2009 | HONG KONG From The Economist print edition Can Asians replace Americans as a driver of global growth? 亚洲人能够代替美国人做全球经济的发动机吗? ASIA'S emerging economies are bouncing back much more strongly than any others. While America's industrial production continued to slide in May, output in emerging Asia has regained its pre-crisis level (see chart 1). This is largely due to China; but although production in the region's smaller economies is still well down on a year ago, it is rebounding in those countries too. Taiwan's industrial output rose by an annualised 80% in the three months to May compared with the previous three months. JPMorgan estimates that emerging Asia's GDP has grown by an annualised 7% in the second quarter. 时下亚洲新兴经济体们的恢复势头比其他任何国家都要迅猛。在美国工业生产继续下滑的5月,亚洲新兴国家的产出已经回到了它们危机前的水平(见表一)。这很大程度上要归功于中国,此外尽 管该地区较小经济体的生产比去年仍有所下降,但最近这些国家也

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15年每周经济学人报刊中英文对照

空气污染英国需要采取更多措施来净化污浊的空气 Air pollution空气污染The big smoke雾都 Britain needs to do more to clean up its dirty air 英国需要采取更多措施来净化污浊的空气VISITING Oxford Street, a road teeming with tatty shops and overcrowded with people, is plainly a trial. Less plainly, levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a noxious gas, have been found to be around three times higher there than the legal limit. In 2013 the annual mean concentration of NO2 on the street was one of the highest levels found anywhere in Europe. 来到牛津街,你会看到街道两边布满了各式杂乱的商店,而道路上人满为患。行走在这条街上,很明显是个磨练。不为人觉察的是,这里有毒气体二氧化氮(NO2)测出含量超出法定水平的约三倍以上。2013年,这条街的NO2年均浓度是欧洲最高之一。 British air is far cleaner than it was a few decades ago. Fewer people use coal-burning stoves; old industrial plants have been decommissioned. But since 2009 levels of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, coarse or fine particles that are linked to lung cancer and asthma, have fallen more slowly. The exact number of deaths caused by dirty air is unknown. But in 2010 a government advisory group estimated that removing man-made fine particulate matter from the atmosphere would increase life expectancy for those born in 2008 by an average of six months. 英国的空气比几十年前干净多了。使用燃煤炉灶的人越来越少;老工业厂已经停产。但自2009年起,氧 化氮、微粒物质、以及与肺癌和哮喘相关的粗、细颗粒含量的下降速度减慢了。因污浊空气所引发的死亡人数是未知的。但2010年,一个政府顾问组估算如果将大气中人为造成的微粒物质除去的话,2008年的出生人口人均寿命将增加六个月。 Much of the slowdown is the result of fumes from diesel cars, which were championed by successive governments because they use less fuel and thus produce less carbon dioxide than petrol cars. In 2001 only 14% of all cars ran on diesel; by 2013 the proportion had increased to 35%. (Greener “hybrid” and electric cars have increased ninefold since 2006, but account for just 0.5% of the entire fleet.) Second-hand cars are particularly noxious, but even newer ones have not been as clean as hoped. Many cars that belched out few pollutants in tests produced more when on the roads. 下降速度放缓的大部分原因在于柴油汽车排放的尾气—这为历任政府所支持,因为柴油汽车耗用更少的能源,比汽油汽车排放更少的二氧化碳。2001年,仅14%的汽车使用柴油。2013年,这个比例上涨到了35%。(更绿色的“混合动力”和电瓶车自2006年以来增加了九倍,但仅占汽车总量的0.5%。)二手汽 车尤其有害,但新车也没所期望的那样清洁。很多车在污染物排放测试中排放量低,车在上路时却排放了更多。 Climate change and geoengineering气候变化与地质工程学Fears of a bright planet 地球发光,令人担心Experiments designed to learn more about ways of geoengineering the climate should be allowed to proceed为更好地利用工程学手段研究气候问题所设计的实验应该获准进行下去。SHINY things absorb less heat when left in the sun. This means that if the Earth could be made a little shinier it would be less susceptible to global warming. Ways to brighten it, such as adding nanoscale specks of salt to low clouds, making them whiter, or putting a thin haze of particles into the stratosphere, are the province of “geoengineering”. The small band of scientists which have been studying this subject over the past decade or so have mostly been using computer models. Some of them are now proposing outdoor experiments—using seawater-fed sprayers to churn out particles of the exact size needed to brighten clouds, or spewing sulphur particles from underneath a large balloon 20km up in the sky.发光的物体放在太阳下面会吸收较少的热量。这就意味着如果让地球发一点光的话,受到全球变暖的影响就会小一些。让地球发光的方式,比方说在低空云层上添加纳米级的盐微粒,让云变得更白,或者是将一层薄的雾状物洒向平流层,这些都属于地质工程学的范畴。过去十年左右研究这一领域的一小批科学家主要使用计算机模型,其中一些人现在提出要做室外实验――就是用装有

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来源于https://www.360docs.net/doc/5f15242252.html,/wordpress/(The Economist《经济学人》中文版)和https://www.360docs.net/doc/5f15242252.html,/(《The Economist》《经济学人》中文版) 11月10, 2008 [2008.11.08] 美国大选:无限期望 America's election:Great expectations NO ONE should doubt the magnitude of what Barack Obama achieved this week. When the president-elect was born, in 1961, many states, and not just in the South, had laws on their books that enforced segregation, banned mixed-race unions like that of his parents and restricted voting rights. This week America can claim more credibly that any other western country to have at last become politically colour-blind. Other milestones along the road to civil rights have been passed amid bitterness and bloodshed. This one was marked by joy, white as well as black (see article). 相信无人质疑奥巴马于本周取胜的重要意义。这位新总统出生于1961年,那时美国很多州的法律都要求强化种族分离、禁止像奥巴马父母那样的跨族通婚、限制选举权利;这些不仅限于南部地区,而出现在全国范围内。从本周开始,美国可以更加自信的宣称:任何其他的西方国家都变得有些政治色盲了。在通向民权的道路上,其它里程碑似的重大历史事件都是在痛苦与血泊中通过的;而此次总统选举则以愉快著称,受到了包括白人及黑人在内的全国选民的称赞。 Mr Obama lost the white vote, it is true, by 43-55%; but he won almost exactly same share of it as the last three (white) Democratic candidates; Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry. And he won heavily among younger white voters. America will now have a president with half-brothers in Kenya, old schoolmates in Indonesia and a view of the world that seems to be based on respect rather than confrontation. 奥巴马丢掉了大约43%-55%的白人选票,这是不争的事实;但他与过去三位白人民主党候选人–克林顿、戈尔和肯尼迪–得到的白人选票几乎相同。同时,他在年轻一代的白人选民中取得了重大胜利。这位新总统有一个同父异母的兄弟在肯尼亚,有老同学在印尼,他的世界观似乎建立在尊重而不是对抗的基础之上。 That matters. Under George Bush America’s international standing has sunk to awful lows. This week Americans voted in record-smashing numbers for many reasons, but one of them was an abhorrence of how their shining city’s reputation has been tarnished. Their country will now be easier for its friends to like and harder for its foes to hate. 这很重要。在布什治下,美国的国际声誉降到了糟糕地步。本周美国选民的投票数量突破了历史纪录,其中原因很多,有一个就是他们对曾经辉煌无比的城市形象已然黯淡无光而感到愤恨。现在他们的国家将会更易赢得朋友的喜爱,而不易引起敌人的仇恨。 In its own way the election illustrates this redeeming effect. For the past eight years the debacle in Florida in 2000 has been cited (not always fairly) as an example of shabby American politics. Yet here was a clear victory delivered by millions of volunteers-and by the intelligent use of technology to ride a wave of excitement that is all too rare in most democracies. Mr Obama showed that, with the right message, a candidate with no money or machine behind him can build his own.

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Europe's debt crisis 欧洲债务危机 Spot the pattern 看变化模式 Jul 5th 2011, 18:55 by R.A. | WASHINGTON 2011年7月5日18:55 R.A./华盛顿 HERE'S a chart showing the yields on 10-year Greek debt over the past three months. See the pattern? 本图显示的是在过去3个月10年期希腊债券的收益率。变化模式看清楚了吧? There's a spike, followed by a decline, followed by a higher spike, followed by a decline to a higher trough, and so on. European leaders keep taking steps to avert disaster, and each time markets are less assuaged. 有个尖峰,接着是下跌,然后又是稍高一些的尖峰,接着跌入一个较高的波谷,如此反复。欧洲国家的领导人一直在采取措施避免灾难,而每一次市场都没有大的起色。 The latest spike corresponds to the stalemate over the IMF's willingness to continue making bail-out payments without a new, long-term rescue package in place (and the corresponding disagreement over how to rollover Greek debt, plus the drama surrounding the passage of Greece's new austerity plan). The IMF agreed to keep paying, French and German banks seemed willing to sign on to a rollover plan, and Greece got its new austerity programme through parliament. But it wasn't long before trouble kicked up again. 最近的尖峰反映了这样一个困境:国际货币基金组织愿意继续救助,但又没有制定出一个长期的一揽子救助计划(同时也反映出如何缓解希腊债务各方存在分歧,以及希腊的新紧缩计划能否通过依然有变数)。国际货币基金组织同意继续提供支付,法国和德国的银行似乎愿意签署资金周转计划书,希腊国会通过了新的紧缩计划。但是,没过多久,麻烦又来了。 Moody's and Standard and Poor's have both suggested that the agreed-upon rollover plan might well constitute a default. Since that's precisely the outcome European leaders were hoping to avoid, this news has sent everyone scurrying to come up with a new and better deal. Meanwhile, Moody's has cut Portugal's debt rating to junk. Portugal may well need a new rescue package, which will surely include debate over the fate of creditors, which will mean more questions about bank finances and more brinksmanship. And the European economy continues to slow, even as the European Central Bank continues to tighten policy. 穆迪和标准普尔都暗示,商定好的周转计划很可能得不到执行。因为这种结果正是欧洲国家的领导人们想避免的,所以这条消息让每个人都急不可待地要制定出一个新的、更好的解决办法。与此同时,穆迪公司已经将葡萄牙的债务评级降至垃圾级。葡萄牙很可能需要一个新的一揽子救援计划,这必将包括对债权人命运的辩论,而辩论的内容将更多的是关于银行财政方面的问题和边缘政策。欧洲经济增长速度持续放缓,尽管欧洲央行继续收紧货币政策。 I don't know that there's any broad lesson here, other than: for all the steps already taken by European leaders, the euro zone hasn't really gotten any closer to solving the underlying issues of insolvency and institutional weakness.

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